4 ms·

OT, we used to joke about LISP source code contains mostly brackets. Nowadays we literally store, transform and pass around willy nillily

by a_c 4y ago

hk__2 4y ago
Speaking about LISP and state in the URL, this is how OVH stores the state when you buy a domain from them: https://www.ovh.com/fr/order/webcloud/?#/webCloud/domain/options?selection=~(domains~(list~(~(name~'somethinghn.com))~options~(~'dnssec)))
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  That's Clojure's EDN encoded for ClojureScript isn't it? I recognize this syntax from briefly working on a CLJ/CLJS app.
  - bsima 4y ago
    Nope, edn uses square brackets and doesn't have a `list` keyword. This is some custom representation. Probably written in Common Lisp? Based on some quick searching I found this reference https://docs.ovh.com/us/en/web-paas/languages-lisp/ https://docs.ovh.com/us/en/web-paas/languages-lisp/
    - mattpallissard 4y ago
      Or it could just be that s expressions are easy to parse.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
I found that joke funny until I realized that, if you sum the count of round, square, angle and curly braces together, your typical piece of C++ or Java code has more brackets than equivalent piece of Lisp code...
- spullara 4y ago
  Right, but having them all be the same is what people are joking about :) Although I might check the lisp/clojure vs java code on techempower or another rosetta stone like example.
  - moring 4y ago
    That, and the usual style of stacking all closing parentheses together at the end of the last line of a sub-expression / statement / whatever. People sometimes do this in Java and it's just as unreadable.
    - User23 4y ago
      You read it by indentation not by counting parentheses.
      - WorldMaker 4y ago
        It's still very easy to make mistakes reading it that way. If you are reading it by indentation anyway you may as well use a parser that closes parentheses for you at indentation changes. (Like the ML family and Haskell and Python all decided to do.)
        User23 4y ago
        I don't find reading properly indented Lisp any harder than reading properly indented Python. I agree however with respect to having the tooling help with balancing delimiters, although I let the editor do that job instead of the parser. And that's one of the major advantages of Lisp. Structural editing is considerably easier to implement. Parinfer[1] for example is really cool. I have to say I'm really excited about tree-sitter allowing similar structural editing for harder to parse languages. [1] https://shaunlebron.github.io/parinfer/ https://shaunlebron.github.io/parinfer/
- NavinF 4y ago
  Well yeah that's a major reason why most programmers hate LISP syntax. It uses a parentheses for everything even though every keyboard has round, square, angle and curly braces.
reaperducer 4y ago
we used to joke about LISP source code contains mostly brackets. There was a programming language in the 1970's called SAM76 that didn't care how many closing parentheses you had, as long as it was more than the number of opening parentheses. So, something like this was perfectly valid: a(1+r(em(2)))))))))))))))))))
- bboygravity 4y ago
  That's genious IMO. Making sure the amount of opening and closing parantheses is equal is annoying and unnecesary. It screams "trust me all good with the closing parantheses".
  - andreareina 4y ago
    paredit and rainbow parens makes it a non-issue for me.
  - paledot 4y ago
    I disagree. I would say when I get an unbalanced paren compiler error, it's more common for the omission to not be at the end of the line. Having the compiler silently swallow the error would lead to serious bugs very quickly.
  - tonmoy 4y ago
    What if I wanted to copy that expression and use is as part of a different expression?
  - NavinF 4y ago
    Interactive prompts already do that. Eg if you google "2+2)*3" it will correctly print "12". This effectively lets you append operations to an expression without editing both sides. On the other hand, auto closing parentheses in code is a terrible idea for obvious reasons. There are only like 7 languages used in industry and they all have excellent tooling that integrates with your editor to eliminate issues like this.
  - ajuc 4y ago
    if ((v1.x()-v2.x())*(v1.x()-v2.x())+(v1.y()-v2.y())*(v1.y())-v2.y())+(v1.z()-v2.z())*(v1.z()-v2.z()) > distance*distance) { // collision } Would you like this to fail to compile? Or would you prefer it to silently return the wrong value?

OT, we used to joke about LISP source code contains mostly brackets. Nowadays we literally store, transform and pass around willy nillily

by a_c 4y ago

OT, we used to joke about LISP source code contains mostly brackets. Nowadays we literally store, transform and pass around willy nillily

hk__2 4y ago

Speaking about LISP and state in the URL, this is how OVH stores the state when you buy a domain from them: https://www.ovh.com/fr/order/webcloud/?#/webCloud/domain/options?selection=~(domains~(list~(~(name~'somethinghn.com))~options~(~'dnssec)))

TeMPOraL 4y ago
That's Clojure's EDN encoded for ClojureScript isn't it? I recognize this syntax from briefly working on a CLJ/CLJS app.
- bsima 4y ago
  Nope, edn uses square brackets and doesn't have a `list` keyword. This is some custom representation. Probably written in Common Lisp? Based on some quick searching I found this reference https://docs.ovh.com/us/en/web-paas/languages-lisp/ https://docs.ovh.com/us/en/web-paas/languages-lisp/
  - mattpallissard 4y ago
    Or it could just be that s expressions are easy to parse.

TeMPOraL 4y ago

I found that joke funny until I realized that, if you sum the count of round, square, angle and curly braces together, your typical piece of C++ or Java code has more brackets than equivalent piece of Lisp code...

spullara 4y ago
Right, but having them all be the same is what people are joking about :) Although I might check the lisp/clojure vs java code on techempower or another rosetta stone like example.
- moring 4y ago
  That, and the usual style of stacking all closing parentheses together at the end of the last line of a sub-expression / statement / whatever. People sometimes do this in Java and it's just as unreadable.
  - User23 4y ago
    You read it by indentation not by counting parentheses.
    - WorldMaker 4y ago
      It's still very easy to make mistakes reading it that way. If you are reading it by indentation anyway you may as well use a parser that closes parentheses for you at indentation changes. (Like the ML family and Haskell and Python all decided to do.)
      - User23 4y ago
        I don't find reading properly indented Lisp any harder than reading properly indented Python. I agree however with respect to having the tooling help with balancing delimiters, although I let the editor do that job instead of the parser. And that's one of the major advantages of Lisp. Structural editing is considerably easier to implement. Parinfer[1] for example is really cool. I have to say I'm really excited about tree-sitter allowing similar structural editing for harder to parse languages. [1] https://shaunlebron.github.io/parinfer/ https://shaunlebron.github.io/parinfer/
NavinF 4y ago
Well yeah that's a major reason why most programmers hate LISP syntax. It uses a parentheses for everything even though every keyboard has round, square, angle and curly braces.

reaperducer 4y ago

we used to joke about LISP source code contains mostly brackets. There was a programming language in the 1970's called SAM76 that didn't care how many closing parentheses you had, as long as it was more than the number of opening parentheses. So, something like this was perfectly valid: a(1+r(em(2)))))))))))))))))))

bboygravity 4y ago
That's genious IMO. Making sure the amount of opening and closing parantheses is equal is annoying and unnecesary. It screams "trust me all good with the closing parantheses".
- andreareina 4y ago
  paredit and rainbow parens makes it a non-issue for me.
- paledot 4y ago
  I disagree. I would say when I get an unbalanced paren compiler error, it's more common for the omission to not be at the end of the line. Having the compiler silently swallow the error would lead to serious bugs very quickly.
- tonmoy 4y ago
  What if I wanted to copy that expression and use is as part of a different expression?
- NavinF 4y ago
  Interactive prompts already do that. Eg if you google "2+2)*3" it will correctly print "12". This effectively lets you append operations to an expression without editing both sides. On the other hand, auto closing parentheses in code is a terrible idea for obvious reasons. There are only like 7 languages used in industry and they all have excellent tooling that integrates with your editor to eliminate issues like this.
- ajuc 4y ago
  if ((v1.x()-v2.x())*(v1.x()-v2.x())+(v1.y()-v2.y())*(v1.y())-v2.y())+(v1.z()-v2.z())*(v1.z()-v2.z()) > distance*distance) { // collision } Would you like this to fail to compile? Or would you prefer it to silently return the wrong value?